Review: Kivio 0.9.1

Going With the Flowcharts

November 9, 2000

If you are out on a first date with someone, it is very
unlikely that your prowess with flowcharts is going to come up a dinner topic.
If it does, seek help now.

Around the office, making flowcharts a skill that likely
won't get you as ostracized. I have a theory about this recent surge of interest in
flowcharts. As the new dot.coms sprang into being, the nebulous job titles that
appear in these cash-rich havens reflected the creativity that made the
business in the first place.

The only problem was, no one knew what the heck a
"Chief Idea Manager" was in charge of. Or whom, for that matter. To
make matters worse, entitlements and perks such as offices with doors began to
vanish.

So, to keep things straight, the organization charts began
a-flyin' fast and furious around these new tech firms. Once relegated to the
pages of an annual report, suddenly organization charts were a necessity in the
dot.com world, if only to find out how far up the food chain your cubicle
neighbor was. Handy information to have, particularly to make clear whether the Marilyn Manson coming out of your PC speakers might be offending some lowly flunky--or
bothering the company president.

The technical industry also increased the demand for
flowcharts in more direct ways. As software development became less of a luxury
and more the norm in private industry, programmers got wise to the benefits of
creating data and function flowcharts.

In the Windows world, the premier flowcharting software is
most certainly Visio. This offering from the Visio Corporation was purchased
into the Microsoft sphere of influence (read: assimilated into the Redmond Borg
cube) in January 2000, but despite this remains a very comprehensive tool for
flowcharting, database mapping, software flow, even office cubicle management.
There are only two things wrong with this software for Linux users: it's
Microsoft and it's expensive.

But penguin-type flowcharters will soon have a Linux-based
alternative to Visio, thanks to the commercial efforts of theKompany.com and its new product Kivio.